So, I've mentioned before that I was considering attempting to make a Let's Play of the game, to showcase an advanced player going through it and all that. Well, I've been doing practice video commentaries and I finally have one that doesn't make me want to punch myself in the face! =D

There's some sloppy playing in there (Jay was certainly right when he said that your brain sometimes fails when trying to commentate at the same time sa playing), but overall it's a quite successful run of a Purist Human Fighter going through Doubledoom parched. Apologies for the silly mistakes and laziness, as well as for my poor diction and roughness of the video overall. I'm still figuring things out and I don't have any experience with this stuff, but I wanted to have people's opinions on whether this kind of video could be interesting and worthy of a full recorded playthrough...

Later plans for this video and possibly others like it include adding annotations to the video to highlight mistakes I made and stuff I missed, which will help me improve my play and add an extra layer of commentary for viewers. That is, if people like the video and all that

Please let me know what you thought, criticism is welcomed! Additionally, if you have any advice for using youtube/game recording software/etc. please share!

I liked the video! There are going to be a ton of exploratory "let's look at" videos coming out, but what I think will be sorely missing are videos of high level play. My advice is to unapologetically try to fill that role.

And here comes the critical feedback. Keep in mind that I thought your play was very high level, it's just that DD is a very complex game and there are always things you could have done better.

I appreciated little things like how you tried to preserve bloodpools on the off chance that Dracul or the Blood Fountain appeared. I'm glad you noticed your mistake with IMAWAL. That sort of thing happens, it's okay.

At around 10:55 or so, when you first started in on Gob, you emptied your mana and dinged off of popcorn without using your health resources. You should have used it to soften up some of the midlevel monsters to make them more "edible" during your next pass. I like to call this technique "cooking the popcorn."

I disagreed with our decision to use your Refreshment mana on Gob. I think that a ding would have been better. That way you could have spent the mana while at a higher level, where it is more valuable.

I would have gone ahead and burned all of the black space after Gob to uncover resources and claim any remaining "hard xp." Frank was doing 82 damage and you were doing 64. He has more "regen power" (i.e. level*damage) than you do. Magic would have given you a slight edge, but that exploration was probably better spent trying to engineer another level up. By 15:55 you were casting about trying to find a way to get that last level up, but if you had killed off the zombie-9 and the other high level monsters, you would have had both more experience and more free popcorn. You probably could have gotten the post-ten level up.

I think there are folks who would really like this kind of content, but the audience is limited for high-level play... I've played a bit of the game, but I don't know what a 'Purist' is yet, for example. It's a tough call on whether (and how much) time to spend introducing any of the concepts to the unfamiliar/uninitiated, but I think perhaps you could significantly broaden the audience/appreciation (broadened out to anyone who knows the game) with a one-minute intro about the basics of the race/class you're using, and what's special about the dungeon, so that viewers like me can keep up better.

Sidestepper wrote:I liked the video! There are going to be a ton of exploratory "let's look at" videos coming out, but what I think will be sorely missing are videos of high level play. My advice is to unapologetically try to fill that role.

Yup, that's the plan. I'm trying to find a good balance of explaining vs. not spending much time on more basic stuff, since I want this to be more about "This is how I go through the game, as an advanced player" rather than "this is how to play this game". I think there are better videos for tutorials and basics (like Jay's videos!)

At around 10:55 or so, when you first started in on Gob, you emptied your mana and dinged off of popcorn without using your health resources. You should have used it to soften up some of the midlevel monsters to make them more "edible" during your next pass. I like to call this technique "cooking the popcorn."

Very true. I usually remember to use up my mana resources before leveling up (though even then I forget more often than I want to), but I regularly forget to use up my health. Not sure why... maybe because mana sounds more obviously like a "resource" as opposed to health.

I disagreed with our decision to use your Refreshment mana on Gob. I think that a ding would have been better. That way you could have spent the mana while at a higher level, where it is more valuable.

I would have gone ahead and burned all of the black space after Gob to uncover resources and claim any remaining "hard xp." Frank was doing 82 damage and you were doing 64. He has more "regen power" (i.e. level*damage) than you do. Magic would have given you a slight edge, but that exploration was probably better spent trying to engineer another level up. By 15:55 you were casting about trying to find a way to get that last level up, but if you had killed off the zombie-9 and the other high level monsters, you would have had both more experience and more free popcorn. You probably could have gotten the post-ten level up.

Yeah, the thing about the popcorn in this video is that I usually take a lot of time to calculate how much popcorn/dings I have left for the boss(es), and I didn't want to stall and make the video boring, so I was trying to quickly come up with something and figured that the course of action I chose would do. My main concern was to save at least one ding against Frank the Zombie, to get through that nasty health pool. Also, I had *completely* forgotten about the Monster Zoo secret subdungeon. If I'd remembered, I'd probably have considered the possibility of an extra ding more thoroughly. Maybe

I was about to argue about keeping two dings for Frank instead as a hypothetical situation, but I went and had another look at the video and it definitely seems as though your suggestion is both better and more realistic. I'll try and consider these things more in following runs, thanks very much for the comments! (Also, this is a flaw of mine, but I pretty much never consider lvl9 Zombies unless maybe playing as a priest. I'm just used to Zombies being these huge resource wasters, I trained myself to ignore lvl 9 and sometimes lvl 8 zombies after a few failed attempts on such monsters jeopardized/sunk a run. I should change that, if only to give them a second of thought)

FDru wrote:Are you Canadian? You sound Canadian.

Anyway, I make it a point to kill off all gorgons early when possible since they are useless popcorn. High level goblins are next order of business.

What you probably want to hear: your video was informative and entertaining and you commented well in it. I would watch more but prefer seeing high level play.

You're quite right about the Gorgons, that's also something I forget about until it's too late :/

In any case, thank you for your kind comments. When you say you prefer seeing high level play, do you mean more difficult dungeons or higher-skill players? I'll certainly get around to doing things like Roflstomping Naga City and playing all of the Gold challenges eventually assuming my Let's Play goes where I want it to go, but I *am* very much aware that most people who comment here regularly are significantly better than me Ahahahaha (Purist VGT...)

JayPlaysIndieGames wrote:I liked the video Schatcher. I hope you keep going with the series.

Thanks Jay! If you don't mind me asking, how big are the videos when you upload them to Youtube? This is my first time doing this so I don't have much of a frame of reference...

lorgon111 wrote:Whoa, I look forward to getting that far along.

I think there are folks who would really like this kind of content, but the audience is limited for high-level play... I've played a bit of the game, but I don't know what a 'Purist' is yet, for example. It's a tough call on whether (and how much) time to spend introducing any of the concepts to the unfamiliar/uninitiated, but I think perhaps you could significantly broaden the audience/appreciation (broadened out to anyone who knows the game) with a one-minute intro about the basics of the race/class you're using, and what's special about the dungeon, so that viewers like me can keep up better.

I agree that balancing between audience types for a game like this is tricky. My guess is that the videos will mainly be of educational interest to intermediate-ish level players and above, but I do want it to at least make some sense for a wide variety of players. I jumped right into this video because I wanted to keep it as quick and simple as possible... Purist simply means not taking any preparations (such as items from the blacksmith, lockers, and so on) into the dungeon. It's just you, two starting potions and what the dungeon provides. I like purist fighter runs because you always have to improvise based on what the dungeon gives you, as the fighter has no natural combat traits.

In any case, I agree that a short intro that talks about the class/race/dungeon would be a good balancing point.Thanks for the comments

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In any case, I'm actually feeling quite motivated to make more videos I'll probably get started this weekend with a new kingdom, the plan is to start at the Bankers since they present an interesting dungeon, where glyphs and potions are the only equipment. I don't think that the easy goat dungeons really need to be covered, unless people would really like to see me do them...

Thanks Jay! If you don't mind me asking, how big are the videos when you upload them to Youtube? This is my first time doing this so I don't have much of a frame of reference..

My videos are generally 250 mb. For DD I use bandicam to record, it limits me to 720p but that is still HD quality. With bandicam it ends up doing the video processing and compression while you record which can be a huge time saver. Some games don't record well with bandicam as opposed to fraps though.